"Come on, demon! Show me that demonic energy!" Tori taunted Castellanos, reigniting both hands. Carlino returned a sinister smile.
"You're going to regret not using your damn Yang palm from the start, mage," the demon replied with renewed energy. He seized Tori's arm during the first block, lifting the slender mage and hurling him into the air, then leaping to catch him mid-air.
"Ingrateful demon!" Tori retorted, smiling, delivering a kick in mid-air.
They both landed on the ground simultaneously and immediately launched at each other.
Castellanos deftly grabbed a Emeric's Chisel from the ground in the midst of his swift advance, hurling it towards the mage. Tori, in an even greater display of skill, caught it by the handle in mid-air and, spinning around, delivered a slash at the demon. However, Castellanos destroyed the blade of the weapon by activating his mastered Earth Spiral.
The movement of the battle led them to the area where the river was, cutting through the forest and apparently also Castellanos's barrier. The bodies of the members of The Sword of Faith, and other victims of the demon, adorned the scene.
Tori once again evaded Carlino's blows almost cleanly, taking advantage of striking externally whenever the demon enlarged his metallic barrier, or when he attempted his newly discovered trick of expanding the range of cutting weapons. Both actions weakened the defense cover, and it was at these moments that the mage, now without intent to conceal his abilities, struck without holding back, forgetting to differentiate between internal and external damage, devoted to surpassing him at the level of martial arts.
Carlino, on the other hand, grew in frustration at being surpassed in hand-to-hand combat. Even though he was aware that the damage he received - now knowing that Tori's danger was his left hand, paying attention to it - was little, and with the confidence in victory given by his enormous energy reserve, he couldn't help feeling inferior, his pride wounded by the vagabond's superior skill.
The final exchange ended with the demon making an effort not to fall, after receiving a heavy left palm strike from Tori, right in the center of the chest.
"This Supreme Fist, or Polar... or whatever... makes you even faster..." Carlino said, composing himself and regaining his posture. Tori grimaced in disgust.
"No. You're slower than before."
"Eh?"
"I thought that your inexhaustible energy would replenish your channels, or somehow replace their function but... I'm starting to fear that it won't be so."
"Oh! Stop talking as if you were superior! Your belly side is open, your body bruised and full of cuts. You're not winning! You are not and will not be stronger than me!" Carlino opened his arms again and absorbed energy after a guttural cry, this time with even greater intensity due to anger, however, Tori stopped the demon's next charge, breaking his nose with his right fist.
"Bah... Try again, demon, with all you've got..." For the vagabond, the deterioration in the demon's power was more than evident. His movements were clumsier and slower, and his defensive barrier was dropping in level so much that even his weak right punch could penetrate it.
Castellanos, for his part, even though convinced that his defeat was not possible, was also aware of the disadvantage with which he ended the exchanges, and of his general low performance. This was beginning to turn into a vicious circle because, the rage provoked by the feeling of inferiority made him more erratic, and the cycle began to repeat itself.
So, with a shout of frustration, he lunged at Tori, trying with all his might to tackle him... A sadly linear and predictable movement, which led him to end up biting the ground with the inertia of his own advance.
"Enough, demon. You've bored me enough, and that means you've lost. No matter how much energy you have stored, you're still occupying a human body. And if you're unable to reactivate the flow of qi through the meridians, it's over. You lost," Tori said, raising his shoulders, with genuine disappointment on his face.
At that moment, the demon within Carlino Castellanos felt humiliated and miserable as never before.
" You're not in a position to declare something like that! Are you saying you're stronger than me, human?" he asked furiously.
"No. I'm saying you bore me and you lost. You can be as strong as you want... lesser demon," Tori replied, unintentionally sounding derogatory, turning his back on the frustrated Carlino and scanning the forest, looking for something that caught his attention.
The panorama, filled with bodies, blood, and cutting and fire weapons, bore witness to the battles that had previously taken place in the territory.
For a few seconds, Tori thought about how much he despised, without an apparent reason, firearms, even though, due to their elemental nature, they could even be useful to him. A similar case occurred with those who had devoted themselves to cultivating Qi as a discipline. Save for a few exceptions, and without a clear cause, "wizards" and projectile firearms did not have much affinity.
Carlino Castellanos, whether due to some residue of his original human personality or due to the demon's pride, partly shared this aversion. However, the desperation caused by being humiliated by a human was such that he decided to set aside what he felt was his own decency and decided to pick up a revolver. Thus, blinded by his growing feeling of inferiority, fueled by the vagabond's contempt, he aimed the gun at him, taking advantage of his distraction. The revolver, manufactured in Serenia for the Sword of Faith, used reinforced bullets, specialized in eliminating mages and demons.
"Oh! Really?" Tori asked, when he detected Carlino's murderous intent without much difficulty. "I warn you, it's a terrible idea..." Without even finishing speaking, he saw the demon, with an expression bordering on madness, pulling the trigger.
"Die!"
However, the revolver exploded in the demon's face, severely damaging his arm, after Tori snapped his fingers.
"You saw me explode lighters, and even a simple cigarette. What makes you think I can't manipulate the small explosion of a pathetic shot? You didn't understand anything, demon! Nothing!" Tori, annoyed and moving at lightning speed, was grabbing Castellanos's face, making a circuit around the forest floor, dragging his body along.
"Boring!" he shouted as, after dragging him what he considered enough to satisfy his annoyance, he sent him flying through the air.
It was curious when, as if hitting an invisible wall, Castellanos's flight stopped abruptly, making him bounce before hitting the ground.
"Ha! So that's the limit of your dome," exclaimed Tori, advancing towards the demon at maximum speed. And thus, without allowing him to touch solid ground, he struck him again.
Castellanos bounced back against the barrier of his taken territory, to which the vagabond responded by hitting him again and again, making him look like a doll bouncing repeatedly against the same wall. The beating was fierce: head, neck, torso, and legs were constantly punished by an annoyed and angry mage.
The vagabond thought about opening the barrier, just as he had done when entering, just to see the result of Carlino being expelled from his own territory. However, returning to theory, he remembered that taking a territory was a phenomenon that had rules. And just as, probably, Castellanos would have to offer something in exchange for taking physical possession of a place, surely there were consequences for removing him from it by force. And although the idea of observing the consequences of that act was tempting for someone like Tori, the truth was that the effect of such consequences could be destructive and dangerous on scales he could not conceive.
On the other hand, he had decided that that demon did not deserve such effort. So, finally exhausted, the vagabond let the battered demon fall at last.
Castellanos let out a mad laugh.
"It doesn't matter how much you hit me! My energy is almost infinite!" he shouted in frenzy, preparing to replenish himself with demonic power again.
Tori was quite sure, almost one hundred percent, that this energy came from the same Dome that covered them. The issue was, knowing exactly how and, above all... from which part of the barrier exactly, and how he had lost hope in the demon and what could be demonstrated, he decided to put an end to it.
The way to achieve this was simple, albeit somewhat risky.
He would activate "Seeing in the Dark" at high power and cut off Castellanos's supply, either by interrupting the flow by being able to visualize its specific spatial origin, or by transforming himself into a more appetizing target than Carlino himself for the demonic barrier. In the worst-case scenario, both scenarios could occur simultaneously, but he trusted that it would give him time to disable his enemy; Triple Barrier was not there for show. He assumed that decapitating him or something similar would suffice after cutting the source of energy.
Everything that happened next didn't last more than a second.
The sound of the match igniting, which Tori used as a trigger for "Seeing in the Dark."
Castellanos's cry in his attempt to replenish energy.
And Tori's vision, which with his flame lit, caught the weak heartbeat of another heart.
Among the pile of corpses, there was still one person alive. Weak enough to have been spared from being the constant target of Castellanos's Dome energy drain.
"Oh, fuck."
